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Detroit had light rail until the 1950s

Detroit is the largest American city without some form of commuter rail service, but it wasn't always that way.
Detroit's streetcar service ended April 8, 1956, according to H. Bernard Craig, an amateur transit historian who's documented the city's bus and streetcar history online.
In 1953, Leo Nowicki, general manager of the Detroit Department of Street Railways, the predecessor of today's department of transportation, began an effort to completely convert the city from light rail to bus service, according to Craig.
One of Nowicki's central arguments was that it was dangerous for passengers to board and get off buses in the middle of the street, where many of the streetcar stops were located. Buses offered curbside service.
In the early 1950s, General Motors Corp.'s introduction of the first modern large city bus, and a strike by Detroit streetcar employees combined with a post-World War II ridership decline to doom the light rail service.
Also, tracks needed costly repairs while the city could buy buses for significantly less. Nowicki's campaign also noted that the bus lines were more flexible, less prone to delays, affected traffic less and could better serve the city for civil defense emergencies, according to Craig.
“Streetcars were losing to automobiles anyway. The only reason why we kept ours as long as we did was World War II,” Craig said.
The war interrupted the city's initial switch to buses, begun in the 1930s, because the government required more train usage to save fuel. Construction of new freeways also reduced traffic on busy downtown thoroughfares such as Woodward Avenue, he said.
Detroit ended up buying a new fleet of modern streetcars in the 1940s, but ended up selling them at a loss in less than a decade to Mexico City, Craig said.
“The city for various reasons was looking for reasons to get rid of them,” he said. Speculation includes pressure to buy diesel buses, he added.
“There's different views on why the city wanted to get rid of them,” he said. “You talk to diehard rail fans, they'll tell you it was General Motors.”
The streetcars themselves were in service in Mexico City until many of them were destroyed in a 1985 earthquake, Craig said.
Craig has worked for DDOT for more than 30 years and today is a transportation terminal supervisor. His uncle drove a Detroit streetcar, and he began his own career driving a city bus.
Craig's detailed Detroit transit history can be found at detroittransithistory.info.